


An Unearthed Sept

by DaemonMeg



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Academia, Alternate Universe - Future, Archaeology, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-16
Updated: 2014-02-16
Packaged: 2018-01-12 17:03:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1192920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaemonMeg/pseuds/DaemonMeg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You unearth a sept dedicated to the Seven during an archaeological dig thousands of years after the war with the Others. The statues of the Seven are modeled on the heroes of that time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Unearthed Sept

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [this post](http://snkrfnd.tumblr.com/post/75716460422/fan-casting-the-seven).

An Unearthed Sept

Day 17

            The dam used to hold back the river seems to be holding well, and very little water is coming through to the dig site.  It had actually been rather simple to divert the waters from the northern fork to the channel of the center fork of the great river system.  At least, that’s what the engineers tell us.

Day 25

            Now that the exposed riverbed has mostly dried, we’ve brought in the earth moving machinery to scrape away the first few feet of silt.  According to our scans, that should still give us a clear meter or more above the structure we must dig through by hand.

Day 27

            Thank the gods, the old and the new (ha ha), that we have interns to wade through the mud for us.  The site is staked out and corded off.  Kevan, our anthropology intern from Queens’ College, has already begun trudging across the squares with our new GPR device.  If it hadn’t been for the generous grants from the Oldtown Council, we never would have been able to afford the new version with 3-D imaging. Thankfully, it’s of the four-wheeled, self-propelled variety, so we need only walk behind while the drive shaft does all the work.

Day 28

            According to yesterday’s printouts, the chamber consists of one large chamber in the shape of a heptahedron surrounded by triangular compartments on each side.  Altogether they seem to form a seven pointed star, and the entire structure contains three stories.

Day 75

            We’ve reached the pinnacle of the chamber, but there is no evidence of an entry way through the ceiling.  I had half been hoping for a skylight of some sort, but we had no such luck.  I’ve instructed seven teams to excavate around each of the seven outer chambers to search for an entryway.  Today, we also lost our intern Kevan.  He had to return to Queens’ College to begin this year’s course work.  Ah well.  It is just us old academics and some nearby villagers until the next school break.

Day 125

            The volunteers are almost through to the inner chamber.  By all reports, this religious structure is four times the size of any previously unearthed chapels, including the one discovered at the former capitol.  Today, extra workers arrived from nearby Queens’ Cross to help with the last few meters.  We’re closest to the doorway on the chamber nearest the diverted river, so we must proceed with caution.  Some of the villagers have taken to wearing floatation vests while the work, paranoid by the small leaks in the levy holding back the new riverbed.

Day 129

            Ah!  It was wonderful.  We made it through an old doorway into one of the triangular chambers today.  I think I spent the whole of the afternoon just taking measurements while Gaby photographed everything.  The chambers look completely untouched!  We’re waiting for the official results of the carbon dating, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this confirms our estimates of age.  Imagine!  A chamber to the old gods from the time of the Winter Wars.  Unfortunately, I’ve had to station my assistant near the exit with a metal detector wand.  I caught two of the volunteers trying to smuggle out artifacts.  You just can’t get free help these days I guess (ha ha).

            From the digital photography, I would say our photos don’t really do this compound justice.  As soon as all is catalogued, I plan to include sketches with my diagrams. 

            To briefly describe, there are three stories.  The top floors of the outer chambers seem to be dedicated to sleeping quarters with dormitory type sleeping stones or altars.  There are dilapidated remains of padding on each of the large stone benches which resemble our modern mattresses.  I would venture a guess that the servants of the compound lived on site.  The middle floors of the outer chambers appear to be for working and storage.  There are various stone vessels and broken bits of wood that appear to be the remains of cabinets, desks, and chairs.  What I am most overjoyed about are the lower floors of the outer chambers.  Each of the seven contains a single statue, immense in size, about twice the size of an average person.  Each of the seven statues is unique in person and props.  The central, heptahedron chamber, Chamber 1 (a), is open, without walls, and vaulted to the third story.  It is roofed by a ceiling covered in painted tiles.  The paint is so faded with age that they all appear to be varying shades of ochre.  We hope to take samples of the glaze on each of the tiles in the chance we would be able to reassemble an image.  Our prediction is that the ceiling tiles will form a mosaic.  My intentions are to fully document, diagram, and sketch the worship chambers and the central statues in the following days.

Day 130

            Argh!  Rain.  And more rain.  We’ve had to bring in the engineers to patch the levy that diverts the river from the dig site.  Troubling leaks were beginning to appear in the dyke holding back the muddy water. 

Day 142

            I was finally given clearance to reenter to structure.  The rainy season is no time to be on an archeological dig.  Today, I examined the chamber from the right of the entrance.  It is marked 2 (a). on the diagram.  The statue is of a young, lithe woman.  Her hair is in soft waves reaching to her waist.  There is an overturned basket of apples at her feet and she holds a blanket of roses like the kind you might see draped over the rump of a horse or a casket.  The woman is wearing a revealing garment which features cut outs exposing her waist and much décolletage.  The statue was once painted and gilded, and hints of green and gold show on her costume.

Day 143

            Chamber 3 (a) holds two figures.  One, the taller, is of a woman in her prime.  She is plump in form, and the bosom of her dress is folded down to her waist.  Another smaller figure is that of a child of perhaps 5 years of age.  He is standing on a small boulder to her side, and suckling at one of her teats.  His fists are bunched in the fabric of her skirt.  At the base of the statue the sculptor depicted a running stream with leaping fish.  Behind the standing pair looms a carved tower of rock and perhaps a tower.

Day 144

            Chamber 4 (a) is more disturbing.  The chamber holds a sculpture of a disfigured woman.  In the rock, the artist carved rents in the flesh of the face, the eyes are hollow sockets, and there is a gash on the column of the throat.  This statue does not appear to have been painted.  In one hand, the gnarled woman holds a wicker frame wrapped in hempen cords as depicted in a piece of bronze.  Behind the all white figure, the sculptor included a backdrop of a mountain side with an opening that leads into the darkness-perhaps a cave or tunnel of some sort.

Day 145

            Chamber 5 (a) holds an immense statue of a minotaur.  The figure has the body of a large, muscular man holding a warhammer in his right hand.  His foot is propped upon an anvil, and a wolf pup leans against his side at the base.  Instead of the face of a man, however, the figure sports the grotesque head of a bull, with bronze horns set into the skull of marble.  In his left hand, the minotaur holds a bolt of lightning.

Day 146

            Chamber 6 (a) harbors perhaps the tallest of the statues.  It is more than a dozen feet high, not including the base.  The statue depicts a knight in full armor and helm.  A shield hangs upon the figure’s left arm, with the bas relief face of a roaring lion.  A crescent moon appears on the shield as well and two sapphires are set in the pupils of the lion’s eyes.  The right hand holds a long sword point down.  Even taller than the knight, a large bear rears upon its hind legs next to the man.  Its paws are poised to strike the knight with claws at least 6 inches long.

Day 147

            Chamber 7 (a) contains the seated figure of a fat bald man.  His body is enveloped by the voluminous folds of his robes and his hands are hidden within his sleeves.  There is a tree behind him filled with little birds.  There are no paint traces upon the “skin” of the statue, but the carved robes seem to have flecks of paint from the entire color spectrum, suggesting that once the figure was clothed in many colors and was perhaps wealthy or powerful.

Day 148

            Chamber 8 (a) has several figures depicted in marble.  The largest is a man in a cowl; face partially obscured by the fabric and partially by disfiguring scars.  He holds a shovel in hands, resting the tip on the ground and one foot on the blade.  On his back crouches a cat reaching out a paw with claws extended.  Small, steel needles were mounted in the cat’s paw to represent the claws.  At the feet of the standing figure lounge three coursing hounds and behind all is a stallion carved from ebony, rubies inset in the eyes, and the two front hooves pawing at the air.  The horse’s mane is carved to show it streaming back from its powerful neck.

Day 167

            We have permission from the capitol to pack up and ship the statues to the National Museum and Archives.  The Black Sisters have given a generous donation for us to continue our research at our labs back at Queenscrown.  I am soo excited.  We have enough material here to keep us buried in research and data for years.  So long, disinterested students and paper grading.  I have a carbon date with a statue!  (Oh, I’m so bad at puns.  There’s a reason I bury myself in buried treasure instead of doing stand-up shows at the Wild Dornishman on open-mic night.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm currently experiencing a bit of writer's block on another fic, so I thought I'd do this for a bit of fun. I've never written in this fandom before.
> 
> I'm interested in knowing who you would pick for your own statues of the Seven.


End file.
